[[imdb:0207998 Better Living Through Circuitry]] is a documentary about the underground Techno/Electronica/Rave culture. This is a culture I don’t have much experience with, excepting their music (of which I’m a HUGE fan).

Unfortunately, the movie seemed quite dijointed. I didn’t feel as though there was a cohesiveness, just a bunch of interviews slapped together. Judging from the large number of “Directors of Photography”, there were probably a large number of separate interviews. Therefore, the editor didn’t have enough similar material (aside from the common subject), or the editor didn’t know what he was doing. I’m guessing the former, but who knows?

The redeeming quality for me was the music, and being able to put faces to names. The movie doesn’t really have all that much to say, except for the repetitious mantra about how rave culture is all about acceptance and freedom to be yourself. Ok, we get it already! Unfortunately, many of the sound bites in the movie come from typical, in-coherant, and inarticulate party-goers, which would lead some to conclusion that ravers are a bunch of moronic kids hanging onto kindergarten behaviours and values.

At the same time, I am somewhat drawn to their the simplistic values. The freedom to let your guard down and not have to worry about getting your feelings trampled on. Just go and enjoy yourself. Of course, as one guy points out, should we really love everyone? Isn’t that just as unhealthy as our ego-centric, looking-out-for-number-one culture?

Judgement: rent it if you want to get a small window into the underground (anti-club) dance movement. I’d recommend the fictional [[imdb:0212974 Groove]] (not a great movie, but could help you explore the culture), [[imdb:0188674 Human Traffic]] (pretty good British production), or [[imdb:0139468 Modulations]] (from what I hear).

I just finished up my first Blosxom plugin for public release. It isn’t anything stupendous, it creates the user/guest/member count in the middle of the right (green) panel. It makes use the the login plugin to know if someone is a member.

I don’t know how useful this will be to anyone, but I saw similar widgets on other blogs and thought it might be nice to have. I suppose the next step is integrated chat, zoiks! You can download it here.

Our real estate agent came over last night to give us advice on selling our house, as well as to start the selling process rolling. I feel good about the sell, but DalRae and I have a lot of work cut out for ourselves. All of the little projects we never quite finished really do need to get done now.

Big list items include: gardening cleanup and trimming ($250), new kitchen floor ($1200), putting up new walling in the laundtry room, rearranging the living/dining room (including DalRae bringing back the dining room set), and turning the empty spare bedroom into a reading room (as DalRae has the guest bed). Hopefully, all in the span of about two weeks!!

Mark thinks we can get quite a bit more than we expected for the house, so that is fantastic. The market is also still quite strong, although August is generally the slowest month of the year. Oh well, ya can’t time them all perfectly. At least we’ll have the house all settled soon. DalRae and I are going to go look at linoleum today. Joy.